Tag Archives: WTO

“The London-listed miner founded by former England cricketer Phil Edmonds has won a breakthrough export licence in Guinea after appointing to its board a businessman with close ties to the president.”*

Market economics has achieved substantial results worldwide – mainly because of huge success in China (and, to an extent, India), the percentage of those deemed at the worst stage of poverty (those living on less than $1.25 per day) according to the World Bank has fallen dramatically in the last ten years, from over half in the developing world to 21%.

Despite this, around 1.2 billion people are still impacted by extreme povertyand many areas of the world remain blighted by lack of economic progress.

Forget GDP per capita numbers – it is irrelevant where all the proceeds go to 0.1% of the population. Equatorial Guinea has a per capita GDP of nearly $20,000 – yet, the vast majority of the population live in conditions of extreme poverty.

In post-conflict states and many others where there is poor access to economic opportunities for the majority of the population, extreme poverty stubbornly persists. There are many reasons for economies to be mired in lack of progress. As Dani Rodrik states in his “The Globalization Paradox”, “the most pressing problem could be a shortage of finance; it could be government practices (such as high taxes or corruption) that depress private profits; it could be high inflation or public debt that increases risk; it could be learning spillovers associated with infant industries that prevent private entrepreneurs from reaping the full social value of investments.”

Macro, Top-down attempts at change

Normally, the response has been for nations to work to remedy this on a macro-economic basis by implementing major, nationwide changes – often hand-in-hand with the IMF or similar. Countries in Latin America were good examples of this in the 1980’s. This led countries like Argentina to see rapid growth through the dramatic reduction in capital controls, for example, and then to debilitating recessions. The WTO model – opening up to huge changes quickly through the freeing of capital and exchange controls – relies heavily on the nation’s capability for being up to the job – overnight. The problem is that the rapidity of the change is usually too much, too soon. It often leads to rapid increases in fund flows – maybe inward as the search for investment grows and maybe outward as the indigenous population (maybe the top 1%) find better investment opportunities elsewhere – and upheaval.

While it is important that positive (and well thought-through) macro-economic change happens, Rodrik shows how important it is for states to nurture their manufacturing, design, distribution and other industries. China is held up as a prime example of this. It did not join the WTO until its economy was healthy and competitive. The same is true about Taiwan or South Korea.

Micro revitalisation– tunneling through the transaction costs

The problem in many countries is that while there may be an appetite for economic progress at government level (where an understanding of economics may be poor to non-existent and the “appetite” may be for quick profits, legally or corruptly gained), it is bound up with difficulties. These often include entrenched positioning of those in power – an elite that has vested interests in the status quo. This is clearly seen in resource-rich countries – where small elite groups manage to take over the profits of a country’s natural resources and the mass of the population sees no economic improvement. Countries like Angola have gone way beyond corruption – the dos Santos family now owns the country’s natural resources and the companies (like Sonangol) which manage their energy wealth; or in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – see Dan Snow Wednesday 9pm BBC2; or government and business collusion (such as alleged in the Sunday Times article mentioned at the start of this post. Guinea has just has just had elections – and is a country rife with corruption as noted recently by the Economist.

Of course, some wealth filters down into the wider country, but only so that the elite (and those associated with them) becomes fatter. This remains a tiny proportion of society.

In such countries, there remains a massive desire for economic advancement through their own efforts amongst the people despite all the problems put in their way.

Organisations like the World Bank, GEM, GEDI and others are researching, for example, these obstacles to entrepreneurship and economic advancement worldwide. All show the huge desire of people to fend for themselves and not to rely on handouts from top-down aid.

GEM (Global Entrepreneurship Monitor – http://www.gemconsortium.org/) produces an annual assessment of global entrepreneurship activity; GEDI (The Global Entrepreneurship and Development Institute) also ranks countries by their ability to be entrepreneurial and works on a macro basis to provide ideas on improving economic performance. GEDI works with large multi-nationals and claims that:

“Entrepreneurship-focused support not only improves the business environment, creating economic value, it kicks off virtuous cycles that create waves of social value.”

The World Bank itself produces rankings in its global “Doing Business” listings. Along with such as Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index and countless economists, it is a continuous process to develop new macro-economic methodologies.

Rodrik himself was asked by the South African Government in 2007 to address the problem of unemployment and developed significant opportunities for real improvements in “social value” – which benefits the many not the few.

In many countries, though, macroeconomic policies do not work. William Easterly strongly makes the case that it is not the “planners” (with their top-down policies) that work for poor nations but the “searchers” – those providing bottom-up opportunities. Indeed, the annual studies show that entrepreneurialism is higher in poor countries than the rich ones. This is partly due to less opportunity to find employment but is also down to the natural and instinctive ability of humans to fend for themselves exists throughout, when the incentives are apparent and not made impossible.

Micro-economic incentives and opportunity provision are always required. These incentives may be financial or they may be educational or they may be motivational. They may be needed to provide networks and distribution facilities. There may be the need for leadership skills training or the development of manufacturing or design skills. Each nation or region or even city may well be different.

If the natural tendency to trade (so common in all countries) is allied to the skills and abilities needed to create, develop and manufacture together with some motivation and belief in the future, then real progress can be made – allied to the profit motive that underpins the market economy.

Fighting through the mayhem

The big question is how? There are a number of ways to do this – but, all rely on somehow creating the entrepreneurial business ethic and safe passage through the morass of so-called “transaction costs” which are often traumatic in countries where wealth is uneven or normally unobtainable. It also requires the desire to build an economy that is wider than an elite – where trading does not just enrich a tiny bunch.

The transaction costs may be how long it takes to register a company or gain permission to sell products or find the training and skill-up or find staff or understand royalty and tax issues or accounting problems. It may be that there is rampant corruption that stifles progress or downright intimidation. It may be that women are not allowed to participate.

All these and many more factors are grouped together to dramatically hinder progress. To resolve them takes a bottom-up approach – which has to be allied to changes on a national / macro scale. These changes must focus on, for example, eradicating corruption, developing proper taxation systems, ensuring that tax is collected and used for public good.

The bottom-up approach can be successfully done by the hardest working acting on their own – and there, of course, are examples of businesses that progress despite all the problems thrown at them.

It may, though, be provided with external help – but, this is generally through business arrangements where companies operating from developed nations see opportunity – again, mining in Guinea is an example. This is often where natural resource recovery takes place – where the Chinese now dominate throughout Africa – but where the mass of local populations doesn’t benefit. This is the case for energy and other natural resources like wood and minerals or gold.

There is another way just beginning. This is where organisations from the economically developed world (some may be social enterprises, some may be charities) that have business ability and seek out those bursting to improve their economic lives that also show some capability. By analyzing the obstacles in their way and providing an “economic tunnel” through the mayhem – for example, through training, networking, distribution channels, financing, motivation, skill development – small pockets of entrepreneurialism can be assisted to grow.

This “micro-economic tunnel” will be different in each country or region or city, but there are already examples where social entrepreneurs are providing enablement into countries that face the harshest of obstacles – like Afghanistan. Recently, two, different examples have been shown in that country – both encouraging the development of inherent capability in different ways – one through perfume, one, Future Brilliance, through jewellery design and distribution into the global marketplace.

With examples provided on a daily basis that show how lack of economic opportunity provide incentives for corruption and even terrorism, more needs to be done at the micro-level where real people with real capability and drive can be provided with the tools and incentives to thrive and provide social value. The days of top-down aid and macro-focused solutions may not be at an end, but bottom-up opportunity is the lifeblood of a nation’s success and needs to be nurtured.

1.2bn people still attempt to live on less than $1.25 per day.

“Entrepreneurship-focused support not only improves the business environment, creating economic value, it kicks off virtuous cycles that create waves of social value.”

As did Gutenberg’s printing press around 1450, the telegraph, the telephone, the fax, the mobile phone and now the internet and the world wide web continue to transform our ability to communicate and miscommunicate – instantaneously. There is no question that technological development races onwards. The human race has a special ability to make extraordinary progress in scientific research and understanding and in the application of that through engineering into products that transform the way we live.

The technological advance is propelled by the “marketplace” – where supply and demand perpetually force change.

Slow lane – Governance at the speed of bureaucracy

As we continue to make enormous gains in technology, our ability to keep up with the excesses of the market (market waste) is almost the opposite. It seems that we react late to technological advancement – delays that can cause inconvenience but also (at the extreme) loss of life.

Inconvenience: the UK awaits the Leveson Commission report into phone-hacking – the use of technology by certain newspapers to obtain salacious stories on (mainly) celebrities. Newspapers are closed, criminal prosecutions are under way and the possibility that press freedom will be curtailed.

Loss of life: the destruction of our environment through global warming (CO2 emissions and the potential for vast amounts of methane to be released by the rapidly melting glaciers) is a direct result of technology and manufacturing’s use of fossil fuels. It could prove just as damaging (or more) than the technology and development of weaponry that fuelled the two World Wars of the 20th Century.

The slow lane is inhabited by politicians and civil servants that exist in a variety of slow lane decision-making arenas. These could be democracies; they may be legalist governments such as China.

The slow lane is inhabited by the “mechanics of government” or “Market Governance Mechanisms” (MGM)– “governance”.

The tortoise and the hare

Since the development of governing institutions, those in government have continuously sought to control technology and its effects. From the control of counterfeiting (as in Newton’s day or now), developing health and safety standards, maintaining arms control, to reducing environmental degradation, people have put their faith in governments’ ability to manage the sweep of technology. Time after time, technology has been at the forefront and governance has been slow to catch up.

Aesop’s fable of the tortoise and the hare had the tortoise winning, but while the hare of technology can be tamed, it is continuously ahead of tortoise governance and, in the global economy we now inhabit, will extend that lead. It is only where governance is centralized and total (such as in Japan prior to the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854 or where the government may be theistic such as with the Taliban) that the market is not allowed to exist at all and technology is starved.

As soon as market forces allow, the pace quickens. China is a recent example of a centralized, legalist state that remains in control but has opened up the marketplace – totalitarianism plus capitalism. Of course, the rise of technology is a serious threat to governance stability in China. This is exacerbated by world-wide communications technology that provides comparisons with the rest of the world to every region. This comparative data spreads the world on what is available and draws everyone to want the same – more products and the latest technology. The hare merely passes on the baton to the next hare.

In the same race?

The question of how Governance reacts to the market is being played out constantly. Whether it is the forlorn approach of international Governance to environmental issues or national Governance reaction to the internet or any number of other interactions, Governance and the governing seeks to manage technology and the effects of technology.

The rationale for Governance (and control) over technology is based on a mandate from the public (whether by vote via manifestos or on a perceived basis – as in China or a theistic basis or historic basis as in most of the Middle East). This mandate often runs against the market – and many, for example, Tea Party libertarians in the USA, believe that Government should play no part whatsoever in managing the market. They do not believe that Government has a role to play at all. This Ayn Rand view of the world, the most extreme market view of governance, believes that the “invisible hand” will provide the right result.

So, should technology be subject to control? Is this two-speed race real?

The answer has to be “yes” – but an acknowledgement that it is a race would be a start. Then, we may be able to establish some of the rules: rules which enable the development of products and technology while ensuring that the trade-offs that we have to endure are sufficient to allow us (and other life forms) to continue to survive.

Race to what?

The marketplace works best when there is an identifiable demand and an ability to supply. This is the basis upon which economics exists. The market, however, is but one aspect of our lives and the market cannot dictate whether a particular form of animal life is allowed to survive or whether desertification is made worse in Sudan, for example.

These are typical market externalities and the market appears to have no answer to such difficult outcomes. These are outside the market and the invisible hand assumes that they can be dealt with as externalities – and forgotten.

These externalities, or market anomalies, are where non-market forces reside. Much of this is the responsibility of market governance; some of it is charitable work or non-market, voluntary activities. However, technology is primarily (at least in the 21st Century) market driven (as opposed to driven by government spending on defence, which brought into play technological advances in the 19th and 20th Centuries).

The race that technology exists to fight is one of material “progress” (advances in health care, biotechnology and the like are within this area) where there is a defined demand.

Governance is then required to sweep up behind in ensuring that the advances or changes in technology are suitable or genuinely advantageous.

Of course, as Georgescu Roegen (a leading economist) stated in 1975: “Perhaps the destiny of man is to have a short but fiery, exciting, and extravagant life rather than a long, uneventful, and vegetative existence.”

Intersection: market and governance

At present, the governance of technological externalities problem is two-fold:

(1) Each nation works out its own response to changes – often many years behind the change itself

(2) There are serious world-wide technological implications – changes that impact regions and the world – not just nations.

The problems get bigger as the intersection of the marketplace and governance is mainly concerned with economics, not externalities. Yet, this may be the biggest problem concerning mankind. Working out how to properly manage the interaction between the marketplace and governance in terms of market externalities while allowing for competition (the essence of the market and the progenitor of technological change) may well be the biggest challenge we have. If capitalism is the norm – and through this the market economy – what role has governance of the market – nationally and internationally?

Is it even possible for the market – now on a global scale – to be centrally managed to the extent that externalities that we all pay for in terms of health and safety and maybe inter-generational catastrophes of the future can be in any meaningful way properly be taken into account?

Or, are there self-organizing principles that guide human evolution and probably guide our economic and technological progress which work and negate the need for any central institutions?

An Olympian Challenge

To repeat: the governance of market externalities may well be the major challenge that mankind has to bear.

Already, we may be dangerously close to bequeathing future generations with a challenge that may be unwinnable.

Whether it is genetic engineering, or nuclear warheads, or CO2 emissions or whatever, the global challenge is to admit that the challenge is a real one and that the market, left to its own devices, is unlikely to deliver the desired results in a timeframe that will allow life to continue to prosper – the Georgescu Roegen extravagance

Libertarians argue that we will ensure that technology and the market will find the solutions – a hope for the best approach that they believe will get us out of the Georgescu Roegen extravagance.

However, the danger that the challenge will be beyond the capability of the marketplace is large enough for us to consider the consequences of failure. The fact that we can obtain information quickly and internationally does not help unless we can use the information and make decisions quickly. Governance mechanisms are the opposite. It now looks increasingly like 19th Century institutions are incapable of addressing the negatives that the marketplace throws up – unpriced externalities Maybe the only way to solve the problems of the marketplace is through using technology and self-organization on a local basis so that externalities are assessed and redressed as appropriate.

This means that the role of international organizations would be to assist the process. Instead of not-for-profits like Witness (http://www.witness.org/) acting on their own to provide assistance to local groups (“See it, film it, change it”) it would be the role of large national and international institutions to enable local groups through technology. Markets are self-organizing but have created a degree of externality that is seriously and adversely impacting societies throughout the world. International governmental organizations are failing to come to terms with this. So, the role of national and international institutions has to be to equip and enable local groups – through finance and law changes but on a vast international scale.

Just like companies and government work together to develop the markets, so governments and NGO’s /local groups should be working to develop externality solutions (with the companies wherever possible) but on an international basis.

Research is ongoing such as at http://shapingsustainablemarkets.iied.org/ and sustainability in business is now a constant theme in best in class organizations. Those such a CIMA (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants – www.cimaglobal.com) have adopted sustainability and the role of senior management in delivering this for some time. Sustainability is the central mantra of organizations like Tomorrow’s Company (http://www.tomorrowscompany.com/) and the whole CSR movement.

But, just like microeconomics and macroeconomics never come together, so the business by business approach and the international institutional approaches never seem to gel.

Witness provides a great example of the ability of self-organization – governments, local, regional, national and international should now be harnessing the technologies to equip civil society to the same on a scale never before seen. Every national government should have an Externalities Minister – where such market problems are evaluated in total, practical help is provided to civil society to address the problems and genuine dialogue established with business. Governance and the markets would then be in the same race.

There is a dangerous gap opening up between people and institutions that current forms of democratic parties and other organisations set up to channel views to those instruments of power are not able to bridge. The problem is manifold:

Political parties which dominate most democratic societies are filled with professional politicians who have little (or at best moderate) understanding of the real world outside of politics;

Civil service bodies and public sector institutions are (as they have always been) full of careerists who are no longer “tempered” by the social reality that broadly based political parties would provide;

Campaign organisations are also full of careerists who work their way up the system internally and may have little real association with society outside their own silo of interest.

Corporations (especially large, multinationals) have a tremendous power in a world dominated by numbers – growth objectives – and can fund large campaigning groups of their own.

Ever-Changing society

There is no equilibrium in society although it feels like stasis has been reached. Different bodies are continually evolving as the environment changes politically and socially and economically. The problem is that entrenched interest groups (drawn from those sectors above) continuously work to make their positions more secure.

In the past, four, main sources of change were developed to open up society to change:

Political parties

Campaign groups

The media

Communications

But, mainstream sectors have succeeded, in the main, in wrapping the first three groups into that mainstream. There is a dependency on each other and a difficulty in breaking through with new ideas and attempting to force through decisions on even the most important issues.

The global economy has exacerbated this problem – as international needs lead to massive international organisations that succeed always in taking decision-making away from the individual.

Improved communications have through history succeeded in transforming the ability of individuals to learn more and have a greater say. The printing press was followed by the telephone, which was followed by the fax machine and the mobile telephone and the internet. Mass communication is now available that provides the ability for all of us to understand more of what is being done in our name. Social systems such as Twitter enable communication in an instant; mobile telephony and digital technology allows information in microseconds. This has had repercussions in events like the Arab Spring but the rigidity of social norms fights back most often.

Society’s complex underpinning will see some new emergence develop from this – but, what is it likely to be and how can the individual become involved rather than be part of a sector that more clearly matches that of Orwell or Huxley’s nightmares?

The drift to Centralised control

Maybe it’s a natural occurrence – that as organisations develop, they coalesce and form groups and associations that begin to meld into international committees that appear completely remote from most of us.

This is certainly true of political parties, true of sports associations (like FIFA or the International Olympic Committee), true of international organisations (like the UN, WTO), major NGO’s and charities, political groupings such as the EU, international corporates (such as the banks). Most people don’t know most of these organisations and many (like FATF – the Financial Action Task Force) have for years seemingly gloried in their anonymity.

With the rise of the internet, we were meant to discover more but that same rise has meant that less spending goes into traditional media organisations like campaigning newspapers. This has meant a reduction in in-depth investigations and analysis and much-reduced investment by newspapers and other media outlets in providing the type of information we need as individuals in society to keep the massive organisations on their toes.

In a major sense, the rise of the internet has had consequences that were not envisaged and has led to a major centralization of power structures – more immune from investigation than before.

We must not be misled by the closure of the News of the World in the UK after the hacking enquiry – the NotW was a scandal rag that was part of the new world of celebrity. Its loss is not great.

The loss of whole departments where the main task was to investigate and analyse how society works (and where it does not) and the rise of the internet as a news medium (and comment in 140 characters) shows that, so far, what has emerged is leading to centralization not the reverse.

Does Centralised control matter?

Democratic society is supposed to provide individuals with the ability to influence the way our society is run. So, centralized control does affect us all. While the drive to consumerism may suggest that we would not mind if we were ruled like in China (more goods supplied to keep the population quite), I suspect that this tendency does not appeal to all of us. Centralised control does not stop at Tiananmen Square – it has no controls. “”Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it” (William Pitt the Elder) is borne out through history and the idea that we can allow others complete freedom to guide us through life is obnoxious to most of us I suspect.

What are the options for decentralising?

The centralization of sectors of society needs to be continuously prodded. That can be done both internally (i.e. within those instruments of power) but mainly externally (from other organisations and / or individuals).

Working within is tough – the structures bind staff to their culture and it is very difficult to break out. A feature of British politics has been how the Liberal Party (a party for the individual within a coherent society and always opposed to centralization and totalitarianism) has become (especially since it became the Liberal Democrats) so bound up with the EU project – a centralizing force that is now seen to be breaking up.

External pressure may now be the only way to elicit change and to change the environment so that something less centralized can emerge.

The Centre for Civil Society in Australia is a good example of an organization that has been set up to prod society. www.civilsociety.org.au

All such organisations are set up to prod (some quite heavily) the existing structures – they are all dependent on external funding.

We need some creative destructionism – in the same way that Apple created new products that tore at our desire for more than pure functionality (although Apple is now part of that central structure); in the same way that Google tore into the online world and is now a core of that central structure – within the non-economic sphere, the way we live outside of numbers and products.

There are some options that remain that can assist in developing society so that we learn the lessons of the 20th Century – where communism and fascism drove the world to and then away from totalitarianism. Those lessons are now in danger of being unlearned – where the danger of unbridled centralism of society is occurring without (thankfully) war, but just the same potential results. We could wake up and find the world run from the centre. Maybe it is already and the drift to unequal wealth distribution a symptom.

That suggests more of an effort is needed to point a finger at our structures and the best way to do this is through our participation – and through some independent organisations, especially in investigative journalism, which can expose, fight for freedom of speech, help to analyse the impact of centralised decisions on society and expose fraud and corruption: many groups, many individuals wanting to open up the closed doors.

and received a lot of good feedback. From business people, from NGO’s, from those in countries where the bribes take place and impact the most, it is clear that this is a major concern.

The NGOs’ position is understood – bribery is bad, it is illegal in most countries, it does irreparable harm, it distorts the market, and it creates poverty in those countries, which cannot afford to exacerbate intolerable economic conditions.

For those in those countries where bribery takes place, the impact is felt acutely. It is not just that money is wasted on bribes that could be spent elsewhere; it is not just that money is wasted on products and services that are bought only because of the bribes. Just as critical is the fact that the country may see bribery and corruption as the norm – nothing is done without a bribe – it is a mafia-type culture where favours and reward for favours are the norm. This is a distortion of the market that leads to those in certain positions benefitting and the rest (those outside the inner circles) are deprived of economic well being (maybe no housing or food) and deprived of being part of a moral centre to their lives.

The Business of Bribery

For large businesses operating out of countries with well-developed legal structures, bribery and corruption is now officially not on the agenda – reputational losses are, in the main, far too severe to allow a short-term gain to be allowed if through bribery. The problems that Wall-Mart is suffering from alleged facilitation payments in Mexico is a case in point – the legal hassles, the continuing publicity, the constant press all drain the company and, overall, question the economic sense of the payments (which may well not be illegal under the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act – FCPA).

For large organisations operating in corruption-endemic parts of the world, the situation is fraught with danger. A business operating in the UK or USA, for example, would be acting illegally if bribing overseas. Yet, there are many instances where it appears that business takes a calculated risk – using money to influence decisions that (even if found out and prosecuted) may well represent a reasonable return on investment overall. These companies may well be in mining or construction, or defence – industries prone to bribery opportunities where the dangers are continuous.

For small to medium-size enterprises (SME’s), the situation is hugely risky. Many complain that meeting the requirements of the UK’s Bribery Act are severe and highly costly. Lawyers require large fees for sifting through the processes of any business to “ensure” that “Adequate Procedures” are in place. Many have gone too far and maybe spending too much in ensuring no bribery takes place.

For others, there remains the feeling that bribery is not a bad thing – it is the norm, they say, for doing business in certain places and British business (or American or whoever) should not be crowded out by parsimonious governments led by the nose by the NGO’s.

For these businesses, they are competing for the survival of the company (in their minds) – why does the UK not “get it” – that “we are not on a level playing field with the Chinese and others who allow their firms to do what they want when overseas?” Arguing that it is unethical produces a wry smile – and a call to deal in the real world where business is tough and economic conditions tougher. A business does whatever it needs to do.

From 19th Century business ethics to 21st Century Globalisation

A parallel with the business of bribery was the rise of industry in the 19th Century and how the demand for health and safety procedures were crowded out and resisted by businesses that saw this as an affront to their rights to do business. The laws allowed child labour and working conditions modeled on workhouses – prison-like conditions.

In 1833, the UK introduced a law that ruled that:

Children under nine could not be employed in textile factories.

Children aged nine to thirteen could work a maximum of nine hours per day and 48 hours per week.

Young persons aged thirteen to eighteen could work a maximum of 12 hours per day and 69 hours per week.

Night work for children and young persons was not permitted.

Children were to attend school.

Four independent factory inspectors were to be appointed.

This was the beginning of a movement that business owners felt would wreck their businesses.

We can now look back on the waves of pressure in both directions that pushed for better working conditions on one side and the status quo on the other.

But, the world changed – developing countries realized that to be prosperous meant developing the so-called middle class and that all parts of society had to be covered – not enslaved by appalling conditions. While risks still persist in many industries in the UK and other developed nations, the focus has moved.

Globalisation has meant that we now source so much of our goods from overseas and this means that Asia, for example (mainly China) now represents our supply base just as the under-9’s did before 1833. Our natural resources (from which the British Empire rose up) are still derived from many of those countries, which were plundered in the 19th Century.

Yet, the norms that we require in our own countries are not the norms in our supplier base – even if we obtain the benefits. When a UK retailer is discovered using child labour in one of its overseas suppliers, there is an outcry and their reputation suffers. Our consumerism does not, in the main, take precedence over what we see as basic ethical norms – which have changed in the last 180 years.

So, bribery and corruption is no different. Early 19th Century England was a place where bribery was endemic. We have, for the most part, cleaned up our act at home. This ethical state was not transposed to the work we do overseas for many years – in 2001, the costs of overseas bribes remained tax deductible in the UK. Now, the situation has changed – the ethical state has changed in law – if not yet in practice. Globalisation does not mean we should hide our eyes from the rest of the world – we are now all part of the same economy (just as the textile workers and their 9 year-old children were in 1833).

Taking business beyond bribery

The laws are in place but business (operating under difficult economic conditions) and business people feel under pressure. Passing a law does not mean that it becomes easy to deal with it. There are a number of changes that we need to see made.

SME’s feel under pressure because they have been scared by the Adequate Procedures requirement in the UK – which means that individual Directors are unlikely to be prosecuted even if someone in their firm is guilty of bribery if there exist processes, which mean that the bribery charge is shown to focus on a rogue element. Lawyers and others have made the most of this – firms are hit by high charges if their risk assessments show them vulnerable. The answers lie in common sense (like all business decisions) but also, for many who think themselves vulnerable, for Chambers of Commerce and other business organisations (CBI, IOD) to go to their aid by working with government and NGO’s (like Transparency International) to educate wherever possible.

I have myself chaired conferences in the Bribery Act – I hesitate to state the percentage of companies that have been to such conferences, but I bet it is a low one.

2. Working for a US corporation for many years, I had to sign-off every three months that I was unaware of any bribery going on in my business. We should have the same in the UK – this should be done for all companies audited, where a document should be signed off every year by the Board. For those companies that are too small for an audit, there should be a statement that is sent in with the Balance Sheet to this effect.

3. For companies that are subject to bribery requests and / or intimidation, there has to be somewhere to go just like the Embassy if an individual is imperiled. Every embassy should have a commercial attaché or equivalent that is trained in the Bribery Act and knows how to deal with the issue. This entails pressure on host governments as well as alerting the issue to UK Authorities – as it is anti-competitive and will hurt British firms in the short-term. It also requires links between the Embassies and industry groups to channel information and to act on it.

4. The Governments that are signed up to the OECD Anti-Bribery Convention have to seriously and continuously pressure those countries that aren’t to enter into a world wide anti-bribery agreement – it should be a WTO requirement for trade that countries make their firms bribe-free and that supplier nations work towards bribe-free regimes. This should also include those regimes that have surpassed bribery and where small groups have taken over the resources completely. Angola comes to mind (Sonangol controls the energy industry and is vitally owned by the governing clique) but South Sudan (one of the poorest nations on earth) is bemoaning the loss of $4 billion through corruption in its oil sector.

Business Ethics good for Business

Business has to deal with many challenges – and external challenges can be the hardest. I have seen businesses in aerospace and defence positively transformed because of the adoption of good ethical practices. CSR has focused many large companies on to going beyond what is legally required to what is right. That usually makes for good business as consumers are far more “savvy” and can change their buying habits very quickly.

For small businesses (maybe part of a supply chain where the end-consumer is not in sight), it is just as important. Large companies are responsible for their supply chain, too under the Bribery Act. There is not much escape.

The Bribery Act took 200 years to get into Law – it is very unlikely to be overturned. The 21st Century world is one economy – each nation and group of nations are linked by trade flows, supply and demand, financial flows, people flows. Just like CO2 emissions, one country impacts another. Bribery may be an unseen crime – it is a crime nonetheless, but, like in regard to health and safety (and child labour laws) we move on.

Types of government have changed with changes in communications. When communications was by word of mouth, strong central government through despotic leaders was the norm.

With the advent of the printing press, information could be made more available and (certainly in the West) education could be obtained more widely, leading to different forms of government and wider emancipation.

Now, with the dramatic communication changes wrought through mobile telephony and the internet, information (of all types, good and bad, intelligent and unintelligent) is made available throughout the world and the strains in our current governing structures are made worse.

The Arab Spring erupted for a variety of reasons but spread through new communication devices and systems. The organization of mass campaigns becomes easier and the attempts to stifle protests by shutting down websites and demanding changes to other, online capabilities is progressively harder.

Is the Party over?

Political parties are now finding it tougher to piece together coherent and wide-ranging policies that appeal to more than a small percentage of a nation’s population. In a word of communication possibilities, single-issue lobbying is becoming the norm. Politicians in the west continuously argue for choice but the choice that is now on offer, between major political parties without a cause (such as labour rights in the early 20th Century) is not welcomed.

so do the opportunities to connect with a wide range of issues – be they environmental, health, sport, education, self-help, business, charitable or whatever. The numbers of people that engage with politics becomes less because people are engaging with single issues. Parties rarely have a key message that intoxicates any more and are driven to compromise on a wide range of issues that appeal to no-one in particular. This means that voting may be on single issues or they are watered down to choose a party that is less bad than the others.

Greece – democracy’s floundering founder

In Greece, so dismally rent by bad government and economic disaster, the situation is playing out. Here, the people cannot elect a majority party to power and are being forced to vote again until they do. The party system is broken in Greece and single-issue politics dominates to the extent that the people have made their choice but the politicians don’t like it and tell them to do it again.

This makes a mockery of democracy in the home of democracy – an irony that is surely not lost on anyone but a potential disaster. The problem is that even if the Greek people are forced to make a different decision in a few weeks’ time, there is no guarantee that the result will be accepted by them and the demonstrations will begin again. The parties need to adapt to the will of the people by ensuring that the single-issues are wrapped into an acceptable set of policies that the majority are willing to accept – they should have done this first time around and it speaks volumes about the paucity of leadership in Greece that this has not happened.

Centralisation no longer works

A problem with the European Community which has been exacerbated by the Euro is that political judgements made after the end of the Second World War are not relevant to the 21st Century. While trading blocks are an economic decision, a political block (aimed at tying Germany into a framework which would prevent it from the belligerence of two world wars and providing Europe with a seat at any political table for many years to come) becomes a heavy weight to bear in a world that is likely to eschew centralization.

Vastly improved communications (including air travel) means that real globalization is the norm. Opportunities are now in place for a dramatic de-centralisation of political power in many countries and between them. Even if we need the UN, the WTO and other world-wide organisations, they are based on a 19th Century division based on the nation-state. We witness daily the huge challenges that this brings in places like Sudan or Iraq – nation states drawn by the pencils and rulers of 19th Century European civil servants, where older affiliations strike at the heart of the state philosophy.

In developed nations, the struggle is less severe but the economic stresses that are beginning to tear at countries like Greece, Spain (where half of the young people are unemployed), Ireland (the scene of a mass exodus after so many years of its reversal) are leading to a disenfranchisement. Italy, with an unelected government of “technocrats”, is surely not the model for the future – where votes are wasted and bankers rule from the centre.

A New Model needed?

New Model politics has to take into account the needs of a better-educated and often single-issue motivated people who need politicians that are there for them.

The political parties have to show themselves to be free from corruption and independent of being in politics for what they can get out of it.

The parties have to work together where needed and confront the problems of the past that means that each party opposes each other.

In the UK, this has been shown very clearly when, after a hundred years of parties being set up to oppose others, the Coalition of Tories and Liberal Democrats is set upon by many (especially a quixotic press) because they are trying to work together!

This is likely to be the norm. It means that coalitions will be the norm. This will be the political “new normal” to go with the new normal posited for our economic future.

Single-issues dominate our thinking and generate enthusiasm more than any political party in the developed world. It is only where democracy is new that parties with major and wide-ranging programmes gain real enthusiasm – which is usually dissipated quickly. Elsewhere, massive disenfranchisement is continuous and leads to a dissatisfaction with politics and politicians.

Parties are now the vested interests that need to change. We should see a situation where each party’s manifesto shows clearly what they would do together if that is the way it turns out – not be scared of the prospect because it may lose some votes early on. This is a big change but essential as voters’ (citizens’) needs over single issues dominate and they have no way to select a range of issues from those on offer – only a range of parties with massive ranges of policies.

In a world of perceived “choice”, the parties need to change to excite and enthuse or we will suffer the continued estrangement of citizens and political parties that will not result well.